raysox

Greater Manchester Inferno

One thing in the back of my head I wanted to do was have a shield logo kicking around. Not that I planned for it to be for Greater Manchester, but I think it works. Wait, what about that name huh? Well, it's the name of the county that Manchester is in obviously. I chose that because the stadium I penciled them in to play in is in Bolton and I was unsure how cool it would be to use it for a large suburb. The crest features a GM monogram with flames at the bottom to fill the negative space.

THe uniforms are a bit Jacksonville Jaguars with cues from the  Kansas City Chiefs. I didn't want to have much black at all, so I used sparingly. I also made their helmet matte to stand out from the other teams.

7 hours ago, Dion Jones Jr. said:

I'd argue that this is a wonderful design for a Viking based team. Out of curiosity what was that don't website called? 

Yeah it's here https://pixelsurplus.com/collections/free-fonts

Just why we're playing around, here is the same logo in the vikings colors

Hull Norsemen

This one was a fun one, because it was a bit of a challenge. How to create a strong football logo, that doesn't directly rip from an existing football team? The vikings raiders and traders went to current day England in the 800s, settling in the east and midlands. I thought this was fitting for a team in Hull. The colors are a tie to the Hull City colors of amber and black. The logo is a bearded viking, wearing a horned football helmet. The shadow of the helmet casts over his face to feel mysterious and imposing. The font is something I found on a font website that lended itself to about 80% of the fonts used in this project.

The uniforms use the amber on the helmet and pants, but I went with a menacing black top with a simple sleeve design. The original logo I created, a horned H on a shield, finds itself on the sleeve and pants, which is a good reminder to push your designs.

 

This design started a stretch of some of my best work as a designer, period. I hope you all check in over the next week to see what i've made!

This latest one is really smart, could see it as a genuine alternate logo to the current brand.

Hah, yeah I thought it was too close to the LA chargers, but it's something I tried.

I tried a duel blue color scheme and a deep purple/volt version before going with Purple and Gold. It felt a little more rgal and better for London.

No Belfast, but them and Southampton are who i'm thinking about if I ever do expansion.

I thought of that, but the shoulder yokes are based on the Scottish flag, and it just didn't have the same effect in navy or light blue so I dropped it.

London Lightning

One thing I wanted to do was have London with two seemingly generic names, but make the brands strong and very different. I kicked around a few names, but loved the name Lightning for the alliteration. I tried a few things until I got it right, but I made an L with a lightning bolt for the horizontal bar. The font was italicized and felt fast. I tried about 5 color palettes doing this, but in a moment of inspiration watching the Washington Huskies, I went with purple and gold.

Let me tell you, the Chargers really corner the market with great looking lightning-themed jerseys. No matter what I did, it ended up looking pretty similar. I wanted to come up with something that featured the bolt, but since it's not arched I went in a different direction than Los Angeles. The bolts point forward on the sleeve and helmet, seemingly to say CHARGE!!

Scotland Claymores

One of the two rehashed NFL Europe teams, and one that has such a strong name. The logo follows what the previous logo had done, but I redrew it to make it a little bolder, and dropped about 6 outlines.

The uniforms were inspired by some of the previous ones as well, but these almost look like a cleaned up Brady-era Pats uniform, but with darker colored sleeves and collars.

I'm a few ahead on designing and there are some really good ones coming, if you don't follow me on twitter.

Bristol Concordes

This is one of those names I've had kicking around for a while, much like the Magpies. This time, I tried making an OOTP save of British teams. The name I went for was the Bristol Concordes. If you don't know, the Concorde jet was a supersonic jet that could go from London to New York in around 3 hours (down from the usual 7). It was the height of luxury for the time, but somewhat unreliable and dangerous. Still, the Concorde was developed in western England in Bristol. Bristol has a big rugby culture, and that's what I chose them as well (plus they have a regional rivalry already baked in.

No surprise but the colors came from the Seahawks. I made an illustration of the plane rising, while trailing a jet stream/sonic boom waves. I wanted it to feel simple, sleek, and fast and I think that's how it comes across in it's current form.

The uniforms are pretty adventurous. I wanted to use this shape for a while, and it's been a turned off layer in my template for a year. It's inspired directly from the 2016 Pro Bowl uniforms, without the weird textures. The font also has a gradient inner stroke to also tie into the design of the uniform.

Going to stick to my every other day concept post, but I wanted to make a minor tweak to the Bulls logo. I added a nose ring that @VampyrRabbit suggested, and worked on smoothing some perspective issues on the horns that started bugging me.

really solid logo, but absolutely adore the kits. Probably my favorite one of those so far.

3 minutes ago, neo_prankster said:

Nice start with the Bulls and Magpies so far.

 

Also, will the Claymores play home games in Edinburgh or Glasgow?

 

Will Belfast get a team? Southampton? Multiple teams in London? Could the BGL expand into the Republic of Ireland?

 

If Manchester gets a team, are they gonna be called the Machine?

Thanks! 

Claymores will be posted in a few days, but I had them mostly at Murrayfield in Edinburgh but also noted Ibrox Stadium. I didn't want to have a team in both, so think of it as a two city team. Murrayfield seems more suited since there's no permanent team, and the original team split time between there and Hampden Park in Glasgow.

Belfast and Southampton no, two teams in London, and yes Dublin has a team since they host College Football. I was planning on not divulging this much information, but I'm open to Dublin name suggestions since I have a vision of their uniforms but don't want to just use the Harps or something. 

I think you're thinking of the Montreal Machine of the World League? Along that same line of thinking, the London teams aren't using the Monarchs name.

On 9/18/2023 at 11:37 PM, B3N said:

I think this one meets all the criteria:
- Boring and uninspired
- Probably ripped from a Google search
- Replaced a solid and very recognizable brand identity
- overall, really stupid



That's right, Twitter/X.

"probably ripped off from a google search"
Oh no, it's straight up a unicode character. I don't think you can actually trademark this either? Plus, remember when Elon said they're changing their name, but it took a few weeks for everything to update to that name? This wasn't planned, he just decided to change it without any sort of marketing push or plan. It's really an inspiration. You can have a hundred billion dollars while being the stupidest person in most rooms you're in.
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F

that's interesting, could you explain more?

Birmingham Bulls

What's a football league without a bull team? I really liked the alliteration, and so does the hockey team of the same name. I did a front-facing bull logo last year, so I went with an angled version  to provide some depth and forward movement. 
 

The uniforms aren't revolutionary, but I want to have a few teams with really classic football looks. I made a striping pattern with the four colors used in the brand. The main feature is the horns on the helmet in the style of the Philadelphia Eagles.

so many of these look like they could be mixed into the French soccer league pyramid. Really solid and consistent all around.

Also thank you for using my template!

Newcastle Magpies (1/16)
I'll just start in the order I finished the uniforms! Newcastle United also uses this nickname, obviously due to their black and white colors. I adore the idea of a team named the Magpies. They're an angry bird, and that resonates with football. This actually isn't even my first concept to use this team name. Some older readers may remember when I did Premier League as gridiron football teams. Well, they're back but much better this time.

I made an angry looking bird head, but tried to make it feel dark. Kind of like the Ravens in this sense. I used a flash of white to bring in some of the white feathers on the sides of the bird. The teal color ties to the color accent that magpies have when their wings are spread. 

The uniforms are meant to look dark and imposing, like a lot of all black sets. But I went with a bold sleeve panel that replicates the pattern found on the bird, but used sharp edges to show speed and fierceness.

Just in time for the NFL to wrap up it's 3-game London series for the season!

I wanted to do a branding exercise, and one that really got my brain cooking was "what if there was a football league in Britain?" From now on, i'm going to call American Football "Gridiron", just so I don't open up to the same jokes about what they call football. Plus Gridiron sounds so cool.

Obviously the market for gridiron football is growing over there, but there's only been games in London. The games have moved around between Wembley, Twickenham, and now Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. I envisioned a 10-12 team league, but since it's fictional, I plan to grow to 16 teams around England, Wales, Scotland, and hell - maybe a few more. I can get into more of the decision making for cities in each individual post. 

Amsterdam Admirals

Birmingham Bulls

Brighton Waves

Bristol Concordes
Coventry Titans
Dublin Harps

Greater Manchester Inferno
Hull Norsemen

Leeds Gallants
Leicester Wolfpack

London Hornets
London Lightning
Merseyside Shipwrights

Newcastle Magpies

Scotland Claymores

Wales Dragons

Excellent so far. Commented this on IG, but really love the NZ in the Warriors logo. The Gold Coast Titans one is particularly exceptional.

On 10/1/2023 at 12:51 PM, maxwasson said:

 

Nice job, but I wonder what the new Mountain West looks like, since it looks here it has a completely new logo and also what that's "GCC" conference that's in there?

Well you did quote me linking the GCC thread, so i would read posts. But so you REALLY see it

The Mountain West logo is another concept I poster here last year, which I forgive you a little more for.

You may or may not remember the last time I did this sort of concept, but for a conference of mid-majors on the Great Plains

Nobody knows what's going to happen when the super conferences emerge. Hell, the Pac-12 imploded since I made the concept above. The ACC may be on shaky footing, and the Big XII is collecting the next generation of schools going from mid-major to major.

But in this universe, what if there was a return to a regional conference? Introducing my new conference proposal, the Empire East Conference. The footprint is similar to the Big East of the 2000s, but collecting teams over 5 conferences, and the Independents. 

Let's start with branding. I think the identifiers "Big" "Atlantic"  are off limits because of current conference trademarks. This is different from the Big East in the sense that it was formed as a football conference. The ACC is obviously the conference that would block an Atlantic name. I don't want to box myself in to Northeast either, since the only reasonable expansion would be to grow outwards south and west. What about something patriotic since most of the teams will be from original colonies? Well, there's the American Athletic Conference, the America East Conference, the Patriot League, the Colonial Athletic Association. 

That lead me to wanting to do something bold. I had a concept that kickstarted this whole thing but it just didn't feel captivating. Then, while I was looking at state nicknames, inspiration struck. New York is the Empire State, and three teams would be from there. Not only that, but it's the cradle of the beginning of the United States' Empire. Add a signifier, and bam I think i'm on to something. So without further adieu, here is my logo for the Empire East Conference. It's a bold shield with an E, partially made out of a compass arrow pointing north east. The 9 lines at the bottom symbolize a skyline, and the 9 original states this conference's footprint is in. 

The teams were fun to put together in a group. They are the 13 of the 14 most north easternly schools in FBS, with the outlier being Penn State. I felt like they were too big for this sort of conference now. To replace them, I made Delaware an offer they couldn't refuse to jump to FBS. I think this team would be fine in football, and lift a few schools like Buffalo, Connecticut, and Rutgers up. Although  lacrosse would be probably the best sport for the entire conference. If you're wondering, the next two I would pull up would be New Hampshire and Ohio.

Then for fun, here is the ACC scheduling system, where you have 3 rivals to play every year, then alternate between the other two groups of 5.

I guess let me know what you think! I enjoy doing this sort of concept a lot, and had the plans for this well before the logo.

I am simply a person that has noticed Las Vegas speed running a 4 major league team city, not an nba official

14 minutes ago, GDAWG said:

How far is that area from Al Lang Stadium?  And does this affect the Tampa Bay Rowdies?

The Trop/New Stadium site is about a mile from the water, where Al Lang is. 

The real kicker is the Rays own the Rowdies. I think it's a toss up to to keeping Al Lang as is/upgrade, or maybe the relative straight lines from the foul line could be a big hint since the Rays seem to be keen on having the ballpark be used more than 90 times a year.

I can't believe it